- 1. Business Case: (3CI4)
- a. What is a business case? (3CI5)
- Strategic rational for undertaking a project. Consists of required investment, expected benefit (performance gain, cost savings or avoidance, statutory compliance, validated best practice), context in the big picture (strategic alignment). Usually, some (multiple) entity external to the requestor is making relative prioritization and resource allocation. (3CI6)
- Note that cash is not usually the scarcest resource. Executive sponsorship, capacity to execute, risk, and time investment from business operators are usually the limiters (3CI7)
- The current budgetary environment (continuing resolution, likely flat to declining IT budgets for most folks) is a shift from many years of growth. For many of us, major drivers revolve around managing increased Customer expectations with lessened financial resources (3CI8)
- Real opportunity to feature shared services as part of the solution – why build and operate in stovepipes (3CI9)
- b. What are some shared services issues? (3CIA)
- The over-whelming issue is the stove-piped nature of Government. We all understand this from an EA perspective but sharing requires scalable governance that crosses stove-pipe boundaries. This is something that we have been doing with the help of top down mandates such as the OMB eGov Initiatives. But it is hard to do bottoms-up or opportunistically. (3CIB)
- Success with informal collaboration. But formal models that include charge-back, service level agreements, precise and predictable service operating model with formal change control that spans outside the hosting agency, accepted models for terms and conditions are all handled in a relatively ad hoc manner. (3CIC)
- The relationship between shared services and SOA-based services is interesting. SOA-based services, or Service Components, are or can be shared services. But there are many shared services that are not built using SOA technologies or standards. However, when it comes to realizing the sharing and reuse benefits they require much of the same governance infrastructure. (3CID)
- Several questions for the group: (3CIE)
- Do shared services and SOA-based Service Components require exactly the same governance frameworks, in terms of realizing sharing and reuse benefits? (3CIF)
- If not, what are the differences on each side? (3CIG)
- Do you think, for cross-organizational business cases (outside a funding boundary, lets say), that an organization should attempt to do SOA-based Service Component Sharing without a track record of successful implementation of shared services? (3CIH)
- For those of you that are doing effective sharing of (infrastructure, foundational, or application) services, how have you been able to quantify results? Have you successfully tied back to the original business case? (3CII)
- c. What is the DoJ and NIEM doing? (3CIJ)
- A couple of other interesting observations based on the DOJ experience. We are focusing our implementation of SOA-based services in two areas. First, information sharing, both internally and with our local, state, tribal, and federal partners. Second, within large programs like SENTINEL, it is a part of our solution architecture. (3CIK)
- As most of you know, DOJ, DHS, and Global Justice are working together on NIEM. The IC has been participating since the beginning and we hope to soon bring them onboard as full partners. NIEM is focused on the data layer, using a federated domain architecture to harmonize a small core set of elements. With sponsorship and governance from the PM-ISE, we are supporting the development of a core set of counter-terrorism information sharing standards. Each of the Domains and COIs in NIEM is also pursuing their own priority exchanges. Ideally, the Interface Exchange Package Descriptions or IEPDs are the payload for a SOA-based service at some point. For example, FBI’s NDEx system allows for publish and index, search, and retrival with fairly complex support for privacy and security concerns, the sort of stuff you would imagine in sharing sensitive law enforcement and public safety data cross jurisdiction with our 18,000 LE & PS partners. (3CIL)
- With some of our larger programs, the primary business case for SOA-based components is in (i) enabling downstream flexibility to support reengineered business processes (such as special purpose task forces) within the current target user population, and (ii), supporting flexible interfaces around future information sharing requirements to insure mission effective inter-operability. (3CIM)
- d. How can SOA be included in the FEA Reference Models and Budget Process? (3CIN)
- The key to leveraging the EA process around shared services in general, and SOA-based services in particular, is first the cost savings or cost avoidance argument around sharing and reuse. For larger projects, it may be possible to justify small added expense up front in return for large projected maintenance cost savings (buying flexibility). (3CIO)
- Key to being able to deliver or credibly promise cost savings or avoidance from shared services is demonstrating how you will harvest those savings or cost avoidance, which implies discussion of governance and demonstrating support or progress towards putting requisite governance in place. (3CIP)
- In our DOJ EA practice, we find that we are extending the SRM to cover types of shared services we think are valuable in our IT Portfolio. Other approaches include the formal model-based architecture, service-based procurement ideas George is going to discuss. Maybe those ideas form a basis for a next generation SRM? (3CIQ)
- e. How can/should the Guide help you write a business case? (3CIR)
- The Practical Guide should help in that step one is getting management support and the best way to get deep and lasting support is to focus on the simple message that sharing costs less, and given the current financial situation we all face doing more with less is the main event. (3CIS)
